We are looking to improve Star Command with the communities help! We are going to be starting a series of conversations with the community for future updates of the game and we want you to be involved in making Star Command a better game.

What do you get for participating? Well, first the game gets better - and we will be reading and commenting in these areas. And yes, we will challenge you on things and bring up potential pitfalls and things you may not have considered.

Second, we will be giving away beta access to the best contributors so you can help test these new features you help develop! We will also have free copies of the game as gifts for contributors as well!

Also, with this post we want to bring attention to our new upvote/downvote system! In the upper right of each forum comment you can upvote/downvote. We are hoping to better filter popular/unpopular (you know who you are) ideas. Clearly it's not gospel but it helps us filter ideas with more momentum than others.

So, onto our third subject:

Ship-To-Ship Battles
As we move into PC development we want to really refine our ship-to-ship combat. Right now it is focused on a mini-game system. We like the system but we really want to introduce more strategy and depth to the game. So how would you do it?

We want to remove some of the mini-game elements. Our focus is now on weapons being more of a paper-rock-scissors system with bonuses and penalties. For instance, weapons might do well at draining shields but not do damage to the hull. Or they may be great at stopping invaders. We have also discussed system targeting - taking down enemy shields, bridge operations etc. We want to also incorporate engineering more - what does engineering output do for your "mobility".

This is definitely our most abstract subject yet - so we are looking forward to the discussion!

I think allowing more than two crewmembers to man each weapon would improve the depth of strategy. Rather than filling the gun rooms and defending them, there would be more incentive to move and defend different rooms. The limiting factor to offensive power would be moved from number of slots (which the player doesn't control) to positioning of crewmembers (which the player controls directly). This would make the rock-paper-scissors somewhat more interesting than the current system of "fire away!!!"

I feel like there needs to be some sort of differentiation between the enemy ships. As it falls right now, the only way to tell if one is fighting the antorians vs the zombies is that the invading sprites are different. Maybe some sort of auditory feedback from the enemy would help make things a little less generic. Every time a missile hits, some sort of anguish from the enemy captain could be heard. Rather than watching a little bar go down, it would provide an indication that something was being accomplished

Last edited by gfukui on Wed Jul 17, 2013 3:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

What if engineers could offer temporary boosts to the production of particular weapons? For example maybe having an option in the engine room in which multiple engineers could combine to re-route power from Shields (slowing down Token production) or dodge (slowing down token production) in order to create "super charged" torpedo tokens, which do extra damage... And also damage the torpedo launcher when fired... That could be a cool last ditch effort if you were trying to end an enemy ship before they were able to put one more shot on you.

What about the ability for an offensive attack to allow the player to specify a enemy system?

Attack the engines makes a ship slower, giving the player an speed advantage
Attack sensors makes the enemy ship have a disadvantage in locking weapons on the player ship
ATtack weapons makes the enemy ship unable to fire back, gives the player a choice to either continue attacking or a chance to repair.

I have no ability to player the game, so apologise if these ideas are already used.

[quote="jpcoombs"][quote="lewis-brooks"]Just thought of perhaps a wildcard attack, boarding party who have the ability to disable a random sub system of the enemy ship?[/quote]

This is going to be in Away Teams - when you can invade other species ships.[/quote]

There's going to be an away team? That's awesome!! I can't wait. Although I think it would be cool if there was a special attack that took lo get to load where it acts as an EMP and it can disable a room of the enemy ship.

if the engine room is damaged your mobility decreases meaning you become more septable to increased weapons lockon, ability to evade weapons fire has been decreased until the room has been repaired. Possibility of shield/power drain to other systems?

Damage to the weapons room could mean perhaps less damage hit on the enemy ship or accuracy becomes more difficult until room is repaired.

Maybe instead of just having the attacking minigames and gathering of shield and dodge rate thing

Make we should have some sort of trap system on the ship hall way for intruders, (Not so common for me though),
Doorways and things the enemy should be able to charge through, and then you have to barricade it or something

If mini games aren't off the table, perhaps you could alter them a bit... For example instead of just having a "hit the mark" mini game, perhaps you coul have a "vs ai" mini game.

So you assign one of your engineers or science officers to jam their sensors, or scramble their transporters... And what you get is a mini game where you square off against a member of the opposing crew as they attempt to thwart you... Not something as complex as chess, but more strategic than tic tac toe. Different alien races could have advantages or handicaps in certain areas... And perhaps a handicap could be applied in the players advantage if he/she is using a crewmen with a high skill level in that area.